Digital assessment in higher vocational education in Norway - students as partners

This paper presents a model of digital assessment in online study programs at Vestfold Tertiary Vocational College (VTVC). The model is part of a larger change in the pedagogy and didactic practice in online study programs at the college. This paper presents the larger pedagogical and didactic modelas context for the assessment model. The goal has been to design online electro study programs that are in alignment with White paper 16, 2016-2017 “Quality Culture in Higher Education", in which more student active teaching and alternative methods of assessment were called for. Our long-term goal is to contribute to a culture of quality in assessment in all the vocational colleges study programs. In Norway, the term “online study program" will sometimes be purely web based, making use of the learning platform/VLE for sharing and publishing content, assignments, feedback and communication asynchronously. Sometimes there are webinars, which are online lectures in real time. However, online study programs quite often include physical meetings at campus, and are really more a blended model. Yet another model is to use “flipped classroom”, where the lectures are prerecorded and time spent with the teacher in a videoconference is about deepening their understanding of the subject. In these different models, all called “online study programs”, there are different pedagogical and didactic approaches, which in turn define the model of assessment in use.
VTVC has been developing a model for their online study programs, which to an even greater extent
than the above, invites the students in as partners.